Jorge Ramos and the Meaning of Treason

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, February 15, 2018

Is loyalty to La Raza treason to America?

When treason prospers, none dare care it treason, to summarize the old saying. But even to speak of “treason” raises a more fundamental question—treason against what? Under that old English law that some say it is now “racist” to evoke, it was once treason to “imagine” the death of the king, queen, or heir. For a wife to murder her husband was “petty treason.” Under almost every system, treason is punishable by death because it endangers not just citizens, but the very principles of authority and responsibility on which society rests. Thus, what a society considers “treason” tells us what that society values.

What Republicans are asking from the Dreamers is like treason. When they say they want to end “chain migration”, they are telling them: we’ll legalize you but I’ll deport your parents and siblings. When someone mistreats your parents, you’ll remember it all your life.

Of course, what Republicans are asking of the “Dreamers” is to put their loyalty to this country—the country we are constantly (and inaccurately) told is the “only country they have ever known”—over the interests of foreigners. This is, after all, what any country would ask of those who want to immigrate. And yet Mr. Ramos’s reaction is an implicit admission that the propaganda line being used to argue for amnesty—that “Dreamers” are simply undocumented Americans—is false. To accuse Mr. Ramos and his ideological allies of “dual loyalty” would be to understate the case; he appears to have little loyalty to the United States at all.

“I finally recognized that I cannot be defined by one country. I am from both countries,” Mr. Ramos said of his decision not to return to Mexico despite dual citizenship. But this does not make him American. His continued attachment to Mexico means he has broken the oath he took to become a U.S. citizen, in which he swore, “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore have been a subject or citizen” and will “bear true faith and allegiance” to the United States.

The blue-eyed Mr. Ramos could easily be considered white—what Steve Sailer calls a “Conquistador-American.” However, he prefers to serve as a tribune for Hispanics, including the millions of non-white indigenous Latin Americans who are clumsily characterized as his fellow Hispanics. Mr. Ramos describes his television network as “pro-immigrant,” and speaks openly of his goal of increasing the power of his ethnic community in all aspects of American life. He is suspicious of the whites who built the society he credits with giving him “complete freedom of expression.” In his documentary, “Hate Rising,” he is incensed when those of us who are not dual citizens oppose the transformation of our country through mass immigration. He has also said that no journalist should maintain neutrality when reporting on Donald Trump.

Yet Mr. Ramos is fundamentally right when he complains that the United States is asking Hispanics to declare loyalty to law rather than to their blood and kin. Law is an abstraction, just like American citizenship, as Mr. Ramos’s indifferent attitude towards this country shows. Mr. Ramos puts ethnic identity above country, or, more accurately, above this country. This is natural—but it is hypocritical for him to be outraged by European-Americans who see so-called “Dreamers” as alien occupiers.

Mr. Ramos’s own, stated position justifies that outrage. He says that no self-respecting Hispanic can permit immigration restrictions that could keep relatives out of this country.

A key to understand the Dreamers is that they don’t want to be legalized if that means that their parents and siblings could be deported. That’s why they want a clean Dream act. Yes, they’re generous and they’ll fight until the end.

This is a strong argument for a stopping immigration completely. Under Mr. Ramos’s logic, letting in one foreigner obligates us to let in his entire extended family. If blood loyalty requires that Hispanics put family immigration over respect for American law, each new Hispanic immigrant is essentially a traitor in waiting. If loyalty to La Raza is treason to America, we should not let in even one more Hispanic.

Mr. Ramos’s conception of blood loyalty is an interesting counterpoint to recent comments of the prospective Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Recently, she said she was proud that her six-year-old had wished on his birthday that he had brown skin and brown eyes like his best friend who is Guatemalan. She is clearly not concerned about an influx of Third Worlders.

At the same time, we get accusations of “treason” against President Trump and his family for supposed “collusion” with Russia. No evidence of such collusion has yet been produced, and as President Trump is increasing the size of the military, killing Russians in Syria, and generally continuing the anti-Russian position of American foreign policy, our Commander-in-Chief is hardly a Putin “puppet.” The vastly larger subversive efforts of China, whose entire society was recently described as a “threat” by the director of the FBI, pass all but unnoticed by the American media, as are Mexico’s clear efforts to influence American policy.

The Left and La Raza activists like Mr. Ramos seem to have no concern for the founding stock of the United States. The country appears to be nothing more than a vehicle for realizing their ambitions. Nancy Pelosi and her like do not seem to care whether people who look like them become a minority. As for Mr. Ramos, there is a frank element of conquest involved, as Mr. Ramos anticipates the United States becoming a Hispanic nation. In both cases, the core European-American population appears to be either an afterthought or an obstacle.

It’s only American conservatives who want to pretend there is no link between race and nation. For example, one Ken Oliver at Newsbusters faulted Jorge Ramos and Jared Taylor for “identity politics gone mad” which “only serves to divide Americans.” “In Jared Taylor’s America, as a white man he evidently cannot be adequately represented by a non-white,” he wrote, “nor in Jorge Ramos’s America can Ramos be adequately politically represented by a non-Hispanic.”

Yet these “Americans” Mr. Oliver posits are largely a fiction. Most Americans throughout this country’s history would have taken the link between American and white identity for granted. The American conservatives able to imagine a deracinated American identity are, like Mr. Oliver, almost all white. But many of the non-whites who are rapidly forming the new American majority prize their racial identity above any “American” identity, and it is hard to fault them for doing so.

In a real nation, there is no distinction between “my country” and “my people.” What remains of authentic American patriotism trades on the nostalgia from the time in American history when this was true. Leftists instinctively know this, which is why many denounce expressions of civic nationalism as “white nationalism.” Mr. Ramos also appears to feel that loyalty to America is treason to his fellow Hispanics.

For European-Americans—at least for those who can see what is at stake—the calculation is different. Loyalty to America means loyalty to whites. As the Founding Fathers understood, it means loyalty “to ourselves and to our posterity.” And it means calling advocacy for open borders what it is: a deliberate sacrifice of this country for the benefit of foreigners. As Peter Brimelow has said, the response to the accusation of racism is the charge of treason. Mr. Ramos’s own comments show this charge is accurate. He can be loyal to his fellow Hispanics or loyal to his citizenship oath, but not both. If he wants to be a champion of what he regards as his people, he can do it as an honest man in his own country, instead of subverting ours.

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About Gregory Hood

Mr. Hood is a staff writer for American Renaissance. He has been active in conservative groups in the US.

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